A Call for the Integration of Digital Rhetoric in the Middle School English Classroom

 

I had an admittedly hard time narrowing my focus for this project. I am working towards becoming a certified English instructor and not yet teaching in a classroom; I have, however, student-taught in undergrad and have also been tutoring since 2015. In taking this course, I have realized that the field of digital rhetoric is an incredibly expansive one, and I feel caught at the edge of it, hesitant to fully step in.

Mixed metaphors aside, I know that I want students to engage with and effectively utilize technology in my future classroom. I know I want to expand beyond the typical literary canon, a series of problematic little islands–isolated, white, and dissected to the point of mutilation. I know that I want students to not only observe, but to create, and to analyze a variety of texts in conversation. I want my classroom to be student-centered, not teacher-centered, and learning-centered, not text-centered. This felt like a good anchor when considering the assignment.

I first leaned towards a more traditional research paper for this project. After viewing Alexandra Hidalgo’s brilliant Cámara Retórica for class, however, I realized that the best way to advocate for digital rhetorics would be an attempt to create a piece of digital rhetoric. Using her video book as a general model, I considered the challenges I might face: I do not have a DSLR camera with a video function, I do not have access to a middle school classroom to actually film in, I have little actual film experience, and we are in a quarantine. People I know who have taught or are teaching are already so busy with developing their online instruction that I do not want to add more work for them by asking for an interview or other contributions. 

Initially a bit hesitant, I slowly considered how I would respond to a student with the same concerns–lack of technology, lack of mobility, lack of time. I would probably first tell them they absolutely didn’t need professional-grade technology. I would tell them they could use their cell phones or any other technology they own with video capability. Images are also fine. They could repurpose videos or images they have taken already and give them new meaning through text and narration. They could utilize media in the public domain and cite their resources. They could screencast on their computer and simply walk through the process of making the piece, a sort of meta-narrative. They could utilize a number of websites that allow for the recording of video or narration over preset presentation styles and images. (More on these options later.)

My point is that students are not professional directors or documentarians. Some will be more technologically literate than others. I am a graduate student, I have completed many years of education, and there are still middle schoolers who could probably make a more polished, attractive video book than me. Even so, this kind of learning experience feels perfect for an aspiring teacher. I have used what I have, what I already know, and what I found along the way to create a piece of digital rhetoric in the best way I can. 

You will see that I have employed many of the methods mentioned above in each part of my video book. Much of the actual video is from the archives of my current and past cell phones, carefully curated out of a library that was two-thirds dog videos. Other clips are courtesy of very kind friends and loved ones who have been acknowledged within the video. The other content is varied between screencasts, images, and cited video from others. Everything has been edited within iMovie. All of these things are readily available to most students on their phones or computers. 

I have chosen to focus on middle school instruction in particular to narrow my focus, to explain how even young students can utilize many of these tools, and to appeal for the use of these digital pedagogies for students in the midst of their chaotic, complicated identity formation. Middle school is a formative time that can be incredibly influential in a student’s high school experience and preparedness. Middle school students often seek opportunities for varying forms of expression and creativity, and need carefully structured educational support to learn how to become strong learners, creators, and global citizens. 

These things in mind, the intent of this video book is threefold: 

Part 1: The Standard American English Classroom – Examines the traditional structure of the middle school English classroom and how instruction is designed.

Part 2: An Explanation of Effective Digital Rhetoric UseExplains the pedagogical implementations of digital rhetorics that expand the previously mentioned classroom model.

Part 3: Digital Rhetoric Obstacles Acknowledges some of the possible obstacles and solutions within these pedagogies.

These are largely intended to be watched in order, as each builds upon the previous. However, viewers already familiar with particular aspects of these topics should be comfortable viewing in whatever order most interests them. While the first two parts focus on the why, the second two better detail the considerations and methodologies that actually go into digital rhetoric within a middle school classroom. 

Whatever the order and whatever your reason for watching it that way, I hope that you enjoy my first video book compilation. I beg you not to compare it too much to the wonderful pieces we’ve worked with for class (especially Hidalgo’s book). I also hope that even if you are not or do not intend on becoming an English educator, that you consider the implications and effects of such technology use within your own education or the education of your loved ones. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

  1. Eyman, Douglas. Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice.  Part 2: Digital Rhetoric: Theory.
  2. Hidalgo, Alexandra. Cámara Retórica: A Feminist Filmmaking Methodology for Rhetoric and Composition. 
  3. Sharma, Ghanashyam. “The Third Eye: An Exhibit of LIteracy Narratives From Nepal.” Stories That Speak to Us: Narratives from the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives.  Eds. Ulmann, Lewis, Scott Lloyd DeWitt, and Cynthia Selfe. Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State, 2013. 
  4. Klein, Lauren F. “The Social ePortfolio: Integrating Social Media and Models of Learning in Academic ePortfolios.” (2013). ePortfolio Performance Support Systems: Constructing, Presenting, and Assessing Portfolios. Katherine V. Wills & Rice, Rich, Eds. Perspectives on Writing. Fort Collins, Colorado: The WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press, 2013. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/eportfolios/chapter3.pdf 
  5. Cabat, J. (2019, December 4). “That’s Why a Name Is Important. It Defines You”: Romeo and Juliet and The Hate U Give in Conversation [Web log post]. Retrieved April 27, 2020, from https://ncte.org/blog/2019/12/thats-name-important-defines-romeo-juliet-hate-u-give-conversation/
  6. Bartels, J., Beach, R., Connors, S., Damico, N., Doerr-Stevens, C., Hicks, T., . . . Zucker, L. (2018, October 25). Beliefs for Integrating Technology into the English Language Arts Classroom. Retrieved April 26, 2020, from https://ncte.org/statement/beliefs-technology-preparation-english-teachers/
  7. Williams, Joseph M. “The Phenomenology of Error.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 32, no. 2, May 1981, p. 152., doi:10.2307/356689.
  8. Bee, JR. “Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences.” VeryWell Mind, July 2019, www.verywellmind.com/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences-2795161.
  9. Collier, V.P., & Thomas, W.P. (2004). The astounding effectiveness of dual language education for all. NABE Journal of Research and Practice, 2 (1), 1-20.

 

 

 

 

Cyborg Positioning in Mainstream Media

Technology has progressed at an unquantifiable rate since the 90’s. Optimistic in its infancy, it is now a complicated, multifaceted creature that grows larger, scarier, and more useful by the day. The role of women and femininity in this sphere has likewise growth-spurted, ebbing and flowing as the technological beast has.

Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” written at the precipice of the technological revolution, likens us to cyborgs: part organic, part technology; part reality, part constructed fiction. This framework feels truer now more than ever.

Haraway frames cyborgs as existing in a post-gender world, the ultimate ideal and utopia for society. However, the issue she acknowledges and then counters is that, “The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential” (151).

Does this apply to modern cyborgs? Why do so many creators frame their technological creations as gendered? How often are these creations of media unfaithful to their origins? How do we acknowledge that some creations, much like these societal cyborgs that Haraway discusses, are in an inherently more privileged position to rebel? Can we separate the social constructions from the cyborg, when the cyborg inherently requires some form of inorganic creation by a member of these societies?

Alexandra Hidalgo’s “Cámara Retórica: A Feminist Filmmaking Methodology for Rhetoric and Composition” is female-created, female-oriented, female-purposed. Its intent is clear, and that intent is clearly framed by diverse female agency. The women she includes within her story are also feminist filmmakers.

But, we must also consider the popular mass media that exists, the movies and games and technologies that bombard us daily. How are women, cyborgs themselves, positioned? How often are the constructed fictions from the real world perpetuated through attempts at representing women in technology?

Virtual assistants have female voices: Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Google Home, and Microsoft’s Cortana. Many are named after women or female characters. All are devoted A.I. “servants” and symbols of a tech industry lacking in diversity. These are not cyborgs, but are aiding in the perpetuation of gendered, fictional constructs. They are symptoms of a larger disease that is permeating our everyday technological lives.

Why does Joaquin Phoenix fall in love with Scarlettt Johansson’s disembodied voice in Her? He is lonely man, she is a mere A.I. operating system with a sultry, feminine voice and careful sense of humor. She is a tool he learns from on his pathway to being a more secure man, as he realizes his love for a “human” woman as well. Why is she gendered? How is she still somehow sexualized without an organic body?

Ex Machina is another obvious connection–a literal female cyborg, a layered plot where the technology takes on more standardized, “desirable” characteristics in order to take advantage of the human men and escape into the world. A male filmmaker, but a definite attempt at subverting the patriarchal influence on the creation and manipulation of cyborg technology. An attempt at a nuanced Frankenstein of the future, but still somehow feels wrong–is the white, cis-gendered representation of the cyborg harmful in its perpetuation? Is there actual meta commentary happening in regards to the role of men and women in the technological landscape?

There are countless representations of cis, white female cyborgs in video games and television shows as well. Haraway was not discussing cyborgs in the half-robot, half-human way. She explains that women themselves exist as cyborgs, partly organic and partly framed through fictitious constructs. But the fictional constructs will not progress, change, or die unless done on a widespread level.

More women of color, trans women, and non-binary women need to be given opportunities to produce work on a widespread level. They deserve the structural changes and opportunities needed to better support them as they enter the technology field, the filmmaking field, the television field, and more. Hidalgo’s video chapter book serves as a helpful guideline for feminist filmmaking, and the first part absolutely starts with having more feminist hands in the pot.

 

 

 

 

 

Video Games in Education

First, I am far from a video game expert. I play them frequently, often just for spurts of time, and only occasionally finish games that are finish-able (looking at you, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim). I prefer not to play first-person shooters and battle royale games, as I am pretty horrible at them. I love retro games and will always waste quarters on Galaga or Pac-man. While I am not an “expert” in most games, I’m pretty stinking confident in my Mario Kart abilities. Most recently, I have been devoted to Animal Crossing: New Horizons because who wouldn’t be? (I’ve also been playing a lot of online “Settlers of Catan” on my iPad or computer with various groups of friends, but not sure how much that counts.)

Second! Like many of you, I know many people who have complicated feelings about the way they were taught in school. Many of these people also play video games. Let’s come back to this point later.

Third and last, I am in the MAT program for English and absolutely agree with many of the points that James Paul Gee makes in “Good Video Games and Good Learning.” As a future English teacher, it is my responsibility to consider any form of narrative that students will be immersing themselves in. No matter the grade level I am teaching, there will be students playing video games in my classroom.

I work for a tutoring company as both a tutor and an admin–as such, I have encountered dozens of students who love video games and many who want to eventually design them. Many of these students, similar to my point above in regards to peers of my age, have complicated relationships with some of the ways in which they are taught.

Therefore, it would be negligent of me to not consider the connections between good video games and good education if they can help these same students learn comfortably.

Will I be asking students to play Goat Simulator for homework? No–although I wouldn’t not recommend they have fun with it in their free time.

Good games are games that incorporate many layers and levels of skills and knowledge. They demand things from the user; they force problem solving; they allow players to enjoy learning.

Gee likens most school subjects to “games,” and he is not wrong. In games and in school subjects, learning purely knowledge is not effective in isolation. You have to learn skills and how to do. Video games, like any text or task, are a medium with which to teach.

When planning lessons for an English classroom, there is a huge misconception that a unit or lesson is formed around the text a teacher wants his or her students to interact with. It is instead the learning goal that the unit or lesson is formed around–what will students learn how to do as a result of working with this text? How will they work with this text to reach that goal? What is the purpose of using this text in this way?

Students could very easily incorporate many of the learning principles that Gee lists simply by using video games as a medium too produce something in the classroom. Interaction, production, customization, agency, and system thinking are just a few of his principles that apply.

For example, many students are often asked to create new representations of scenes from Shakespeare plays. It is a great way to work with the performance-based medium and allow students to create a kind of directorial intent, something they are ideally analyzing in other representations beforehand.

Often, these projects are filmed (in my time, on digital cameras, but now more often on phones) and edited in iMovie or similar softwares. Other times, they can act it out in class in real time. Sometimes students are able to create or draw things akin to graphic novels or storyboards. The goal of these kinds of projects are for students to demonstrate they understand the language of the scene, but also that they understand how to effectively manipulate rhetorical devices (tone, symbolism, setting, etc.) through various mediums (not just writing, but also visuals, props, sound/music, etc.).

There are a number of video games* where students could utilize existing characters (or customize them), put them in settings (and customize those settings), utilize certain props, set everything up in a manner that represents the action/meaning they are trying to portray, and then either screenshot several crafted scenarios (to create a storyboard) or record the scene. Not only are the graphics in most games superior to many other tools students could find for free online, but they can also use something they are familiar with to engage with the material more effectively. Like students using video technology or other graphics, the students would have to explain their choices and why they included them, still demonstrating the same skills and understandings as their classmates.

(*Animal Crossing: New Horizons, MineCraft, SIMS, Skyrim, and many more.)

This is a basic example of an assignment that incorporates good video games, but it is something I would absolutely accept as a teacher. Multimodality should not be limited to PowerPoints and iMovie, and I know many adults who would have loved to be able to utilize their favorite video games as project mediums for school.

Even more simple? I need to keep playing games. I push myself to keep reading in order to keep up with what my future students might enjoy. I already enjoy video games, so I need to keep doing that as well–students will not stop playing video games any time soon.

I do not need to be an expert on video games, but empathy and understanding of something they are passionate about goes a long way toward effective teaching and a healthy classroom culture. I do not want to lose the appreciation I have for this medium, and I also know that it will only continue to grow as a form of complex narrative as time goes on.

 

 

 

 

 

Electronic Narratives and Reader Response

I can’t think of a more appropriate time to discuss technological craftsmanship and storytelling than right now. My computer is about a day away from grafting itself as an extra appendage onto my body, my ears have molded themselves around my AirPods, and my fingers are now permanently curled to trace the path of my keyboard. I’ve played more Animal Crossing than I’d like to admit. And, hey, the streaming-powers-that-be finally put Community on Netflix, so I can now rewatch yet another show.

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In maneuvering through the related articles and resources in this module, I returned to another piece of media that I originally discovered years ago, and began to consider it through the lens that Punday provides on the position of the reader in digital narratives. The piece is titled “To This Day Project,” written and read by Canadian spoken-word poet Shane Koyczan (content warnings for self-harm, mention of suicide, and mental illness):

 

 

This project began as a spoken-word poem, and grew into something much larger. Used in part to help define and promote an anti-bullying campaign, the video features dozens of animators and an original score to move with the poetry. The poet, Shane Koyczan, performs the audio as he normally would, but adds more dimension and intensity to match the rise and swell of the words and music.

Typically, spoken word poetry is performance–the poet at the microphone. The poem is listened to with its intended tones, emphasis, and inflections, straight from the creator’s mouth. This tends to position readers as the “narrative audience” that Punday explains, as the readers focus on content  more than form. Occasionally, the poem has been transferred onto paper or into another form of text. The poem is read like other forms of poetry, with readers adding their own tones, emphasis, and inflection, which means the reader fall into both of Punday’s categories: “narrative audience,” focusing on content, and “authorial audience,” focusing on artificial form and rhetorical intent.

That makes me wonder–how are readers positioned in a spoken word poem with these added, digital elements? The narrator still exists in this form, as Punday points out (28). But the added elements change the context of the narration itself. There is little choice to be made by any readers–there are no hyperlinks, no interactive elements. This is not a video game or a linked text.

However, the rules and options for the implied reader do still differ from those of a (theoretical) printed version of the “To This Day Project.” For one, there is an inherent inquiry created through the title and collaborative aspects of this piece. The word “project” is important in implying there is more to this piece than just the piece itself–that it is merely an artifact within a larger purpose. Many readers/viewers go on to finding the website for the project, which contains a variety of other content (mostly blog posts from various authors). Interestingly, the website is not linked in this video’s description, but there are links to other resources for victims of bullying.

The piece also emphasizes its collaborative nature: while the poet is front-and-center, there is an obvious, larger group of authors involved in the electronic narrative. Many artists, animators, and musicians crafted the overall piece, as evidenced in the credits and video description. The most obvious point of collaboration is the artifact itself, as the animation blends seamlessly from one style and voice to another, moving with music that starts and stops and climaxes with deliberation.

The music is without words and the imagery in the animation tends to lean towards the abstract when it comes to representing the poetry itself. The piece is less about the poet than it would be when performed traditionally. Arguably, it becomes less about the poem itself as well and more about the idea. In this case, I would argue that readers fall into an almost “narrative” position, but perhaps go even more deeply into an immersive empathetic or emotive position.

To demonstrate the emotions invoked by this piece, I would encourage anyone to look at the comments below the video (content warnings as well for self-harm, mental illness, and bullying). Though it was released in early 2013, many readers are still discovering it for the first time or simply returning to it years later. Many posting comments are survivors of bullying and/or mental health issues. It seems like this digital narrative became an important token for many people going through similar experiences to those of the author, and that the platform itself (Youtube) has become a sort of communal place to contribute personal histories in relation to the digital narrative. There seem to be few actual replies between the commentators, implying the digital rhetoric is simply allowing readers a platform to add their own experiences, to speak them out to other readers.

For most of these readers, and for myself, I think that piece is most effective in how it has been presented. I do not know that mere text could organically illicit the same reader response that this multimodal representation has, or that it could better reach the intended purpose:

“My experiences with violence in schools still echo throughout my life but standing to face the problem has helped me in immeasurable ways.

Schools and families are in desperate need of proper tools to confront this problem. This piece is a starting point.” – Shane

DonT uSe thAt WeIrd SpoNgEboB MoCkinG MEme: Memes as Sociopolitical Mediums in a Divisive Era

The Alt-Right’s use of Pepe the frog felt like an incredibly strange moment in time, an indistinctive, passing headline at the blurry fringes of my technological vision. It was what felt like a ridiculous appropriation of a formerly light internet meme, and there were what felt like larger issues to focus on at that time. It would be safe to assume this was the thought for many people, especially in a tumultuous period of time like the 2016 presidential election. However, “The Cult of Kek,” as the Southern Poverty Law Center details, was of a much larger scale than I knew. 

The SPLC, as well as Paul Spencer of Vice, explains that connecting the crudely-drawn cartoon frog to a coincidental frog diety of chaos allowed the Alt-Right community to perpetuate two of their favorite tactics: trolling liberals and fighting what they perceive to be the politically correct status quo. This is a group of people that fancies themselves to be “agents of chaos,” not unlike the toxic group of masculinity-seeking men in Chuck Palahniuk’s (oft-misunderstood) Fight Club. By extension, the meme was attributed to the political candidate that the Alt-Right rallied behind, the candidate they believed would best fulfill their desired, PC-less ideals—Donald Trump. In attributing the meme to an actual deity and to an actual, real-life idol, the group was then able to craft an entire religious system and story around their symbol Kek. 

Possibly somewhat serious, likely the work of very committed trolls, definitely all-confusing, the group’s use of the meme was an extreme version of a common method of meme-usage today. Many people create and share memes on various topics across social media platforms, image- and text-based content that they relate to their individual lives and experiences. Memes exist in a shared, paradoxical space as well. Both individuals and collective groups utilize memes as a means of expressing opinions in a cartoonish way, giving power to symbols that would otherwise seem ridiculous. Despite the goofiness of the medium, much of the sociopolitical content expressed through the use of memes can contain some serious, succinct commentary. Meme-ing is a special variety of languages that only members of certain communities can understand.

One large and mostly recent example was the wildfire meme known as “Mocking Spongebob.” According to Know Your Meme, this meme began with an image from the 2012 “Little Yellow Book” episode of Spongebob Squarepants. As you can see in the examples of the meme below, it consists of a beloved cartoon character positioned like a chicken. Know Your Meme explains the origins of the meme, a screenshot from a Twitter user, that then grew in popularity and was re-formatted to mock statements of opinion using a line of stated text that is then repeated in varying lowercase and capital letters. Although it is hard to name the sing-song tone of the mocking sentences, it is a tone that many viewers can identify perfectly in their heads (think of a younger sibling, repeating your words back at you in a voice totally different than your own to frustrate you as much as possible). 

 

Know Your Meme shows that one of the most popular initial iterations of this meme is the following political statement:

While the same Spongebob image was used differently before this, this was the first recorded version of the meme with all of its popularized, current features. Perhaps frustration that many millennials feel within the existing system is what skyrocketed this particular iteration to infamy. In my personal experience, I have largely seen this meme used in various contexts, but especially have seen it used as a more critical sociopolitical medium, perhaps because it fell into the Internet’s lap at a time of great political upheaval and divisive, internet-fueled sociopolitical opinions. 

The Mocking Spongebob meme is one of many memes often used as a method of making a point about politics or society. Often, I have seen this meme used by those on the left side of the political spectrum at the expense of those on the right (please view more examples below, including a pretty scary-looking Trump version). While the left’s use of this meme and others does not espouse any harm towards groups of people, it is interesting that it mimics the childish, mocking tone of memes like Kek, often to poke fun at and heckle the other side of the aisle. Is this a kind of metacommentary on alt-right trolling, or simply another group displaying similar frameworks for very different ideaologies?

 

 

 

While the left is not mock-worshipping any one symbol, the function and tone of the associated discourse it worth examining. Does the use of jokes to express opinions hurt a cause? Does the lack of devotion, the atheistic following, and the nature of the critiques within the meme itself elevate the use of memes as a medium, or does the nature of the medium itself simply maintain a certain level of immaturity that gouges the purpose? As the use of memes as commentary only grows, these questions will remain relevant.  Many political candidates have even become comfortable with utilizing memes in the social media campaigning to appeal to different voters, which begs a slew of other questions. 

It is safe to say that meme culture it not going away. It is possible that Mocking Spongebob, down in popularity, could even have a meme renaissance (much like Pepe, though ideally for different reasons)—he is a figure of millennial nostalgia if nothing else. It will be interesting to see if sociopolitical commentary within memes will continue past the Trump era, or if is simply a symptom of a larger disease.  

Bodies, Interrupted: The Complicated Ethics of “The Black Museum” and the Posthuman

 

Katherine Hayles’s “How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics” focuses on the complicated  relationship between consciousness and embodiment in an age speeding towards virtuality. Hayles maintains that the two are not mutually exclusive and acknowledges that the posthuman narrative so popular across modern texts implies a distinct lack of the physical self’s role or of individual agency. Instead, Hayles’s “… dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of of unlimited power and disembodied immortality…” (5).

This is an incredibly interesting article, and all the more terrifying to think about today as we drift towards our digital image at the cost of our actual selves. Our presence on social media is not anything but a curated version of our “self,” and was not even something to consider in 1999, when the posthuman was expanding within the dawn of new technology. We grow closer to our personal devices by the day, rarely parting from our Smartphones and growing more and more anxious when we are separated from them.

In part because of these modern themes, there is a huge variety of recent texts that Hayles’s article brings to mind. I immediately thought of the popular show Black Mirror and a popular, recent episode aptly titled, “The Black Museum.” Black Mirror often deals with the ethics, horror, and wide variety of other implications that our current and future technology plays within our roles as humans, individuals, and societies. (All seasons are available on Netflix.) The anthology series has several episodes that focus on or include the idea of human consciousness, agency, and how these things interact with our physical bodies.

The premise of this particular episode is simple, for those who have not watched it. A young woman is driving on some kind of ambiguous road trip backdropped with scenery reminiscent of a sunny, middle America. She stops to charge her car, low on battery, with solar power and finds herself outside of a roadside attraction–the Black Museum.

The man in charge of the museum eagerly shows her around the dimply lit exhibits, mostly artifacts of horrible, technological horror stories. (A handful of the artifacts in the background are Easter Eggs from earlier episodes of the show.) He tells our protagonist three extensive stories, and it is the last two that pull from Hayles’s worst fears.

Story two is centered around a stuffed monkey (pictured above). Enter: a family falling apart. Mom is in a coma. Her physical body is dying, and it is her husband’s desire to keep her alive for their child, first by sharing his body with her. Her consciousness is removed from her body and transplanted into her husband’s body, their new shared space.

Suffice it to say that things do not work out well for them over time–and his next option is moving her consciousness once more, into a stuffed monkey for their child. Mom can no longer speak once placed into the object, can only see her child grow and her husband find new romance. Her voice is limited to two soft phrases that the toy is programmed to say. She is eventually abandoned as her family moves on.

(Horrifying is the fact that the museum curator claims her consciousness still remains in the toy, encased in glass at the museum.)

The final story is the culmination of the episode. I will not give too much detail, as it would spoil quite a bit, but the museum curator, becoming increasingly sweaty in the summer heat, proudly shows our protagonist his most impressive exhibit: a hologram of a convicted murderer’s execution that allows museum goers to flip the switch. The murderer signed over the rights to his own consciousness for this hologram to exist, and sadistic patrons of the exhibit are able to get little, animated keychains of the convict’s pained face after they fry him.

 

Outside of the terror most viewers might feel when considering themselves in the position of the stories’ victims, the episode poses many ethical conflicts that remain somewhat unresolved. In the case of the toy monkey, a husband attempts to preserve his wife’s life (perhaps an attempt at the “immortality” Hayles condemns) by moving her consciousness into his body, which keeps her in a biological body while still removing her agency. Would Hayles consider this evidence that our natural selves are completely linked to our consciousnesses? Even the husband in the story loses some of his agency by sharing his physical body with his wife, leading to the transfer of his wife’s consciousness to an object. He has complete physical control of his body, but the consciousness of his wife speaks to and influences him as he makes decisions about their child and his own life. Outside of the physical possibilities, would this type of procedure be even remotely possible in a world where embodiment and consciousness are a part of each other?

“Similarly, the presumption that there is an agency, desire, or will belonging to the self and clearly distinguished from the ‘wills of others’ is undercut in the posthuman, for the posthuman’s collective heterogeneous quality implies a distributed cognition located in disparate parts that may be in only tenuous communication with one another” (4).

In the case of the wife in the toy monkey, and even of the convict being killed again and again, other individuals completely de-humanize them due to their lack of physical, biological bodies. A toy and a hologram are easier to neglect or abuse. A loss of humanity as soon as a body is not what it should be, even if it resembles a body (like the hologram) or contains the consciousness of a loved one (like the toy monkey), again implies the actual lack of disconnect between the concrete body and the conscious.

 

Hello, EGL614!

Hi!

I’m Cassie (short for Cassandra). I’m in the MAT English program at Stony Brook and plan on student teaching in Fall 2020. I received my undergraduate degree in Adolescent English Education at SUNY Cortland. I have lived in both Nassau and Suffolk county on Long Island, so I guess you could call me pretty well-travelled.

Like many of you, I have always loved to read and continue to translate that love of storytelling into various forms of media digestion–TV shows, movies, comics, plays, etc. My most recent media consumption includes The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (novel), Seinfeld (TV series), and Crime Junkie (podcast).

(Side-note: I’m also always looking for recommendations and would love to know what everyone is reading/watching/listening to!)

Perhaps most importantly, I have three fantastic dogs with three very distinct personalities (please see below; pardon the low quality):

 

(Second side-note: Please share all the pet pictures.)

One of the handful of strange jobs in my work history includes copy-writing for a medical SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company, where I spent much of my time writing blog posts for a variety of medical doctors and plastic surgeons looking to expand their businesses. I have also had to keep blogs, Twitter accounts, and other online forums that were abandoned at the ends of undergraduate courses. Otherwise, I don’t have much experience in the field of digital rhetoric outside of casual social media use.

I am very much looking forward to finding ways to implement technology into my future classroom in a manner that is both constructive and conducive to adolescent learning in a digital era. The fact that much of this learning will be done online, where there are boundless opportunities to incorporate visuals, play with structure, and synthesize a variety of tools, is the cherry on top.

Looking forward to working with all of you!

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